How things look through an Oregonian's eyes

May 30, 2011

We have non-easy care landscaping. Our home's garden isn't a "mow it and forget about it" sort of place. It's filled with plantings that require a lot of attention from the two of us.

So I decided to take advantage of some sunshine this Memorial Day (annoyingly brief; it started raining again late in the afternoon) and conduct a video tour of our rural south Salem garden.

My thought was that if more people see it, we'd be able to divide all the time, money, and energy we pour into our yard by a greater number of eyeballs -- thereby leading us to feel that all of our work makes more sense from a garden viewing standpoint.

The most impressive part of my seven and a half minute iPhone video is that I had the courage to start off with a close-up of me. (I used the Multicorder app, which lets you switch between the front and back cameras of the iPhone 4).

I'd just gotten out of the shower and had barely dried my hair. In my younger days I would have worried about how I looked. But this is one of the advantages of becoming senior discount eligible: I've come to accept my geezerness to a much greater degree than I could have imagined a decade or two ago.

Anyway, have a look. For at least a couple of minutes... please... pretty please. Like I said, the more people who see our home's garden, the better we'll feel about spending so much effort on it.

May 28, 2011

I don't like ATVs wrecking nature. But I also don't like the attitude of "welfare ranchers" who get to graze livestock on public land for ridiculously low fees, then complain that they're not able to do just what they want on their property.

Such as killing wolves, even though these natural predators account for only a minuscule percentage of livestock losses.

Also, keeping people off of leased public land. On the Portland Oregonian's editorial page today I read "Trespassing by ATV: We need to protect ranching and recreation" by Ambers Thornburgh.

What caught my eye was this paragraph... (bold is my addition)

Over the past several years, I have noticed a steep increase in the number of people using ATVs in central Oregon. As a result of repeated trespass, I continually have to sign and post my private lands to protect my home and my cattle. This has required considerable time and resources to fortify the fences and gates and continually post "No Trespassing" signs.

Which didn't fit with the next paragraph...

Despite these efforts, reckless riders still illegally cross onto my land. The damage from off-roaders to signs, fences and land I lease from the Bureau of Land Management has been so extensive that I have had to reduce my number of cattle.

Leased land isn't private land. Not really. In a way it is, but in another way it isn't -- especially when the land is being used for grazing livestock instead of a habitation (as is the case with leased lots on Forest Service land where private cabins have been built).

I'm not excusing the ATV'ers. However, they probably figure that they have a right to be on public land, just as the rancher is.

It'd help if ranchers paid higher lease fees that truly covered the cost of both the grazing right and the environmental damage done by their livestock. Then they'd have a better argument for keeping other taxpayers off of the public land they're leasing.

May 26, 2011

After a string of highly negative blog posts about what a crappy excuse for a health insurance provider Regence BlueCross Blueshield of Oregon is (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), I've got something good to say about the company.

Today I learned that Regence is going to pay 80% of the cost of the colonoscopy that I had in February, a big jump from the 0% my Regence Evolve Plus plan originally was going to pay.

The procedure went fine. It was even enjoyable, in a drugged-up sense. A flat polyp was found and removed in the first colonoscopy's "bad prep" area. Once again, it turned out to be benign.

This is the good news. The bad news arrived in the mail a few days ago: an "Explanation of Benefits" form from Regence of Oregon regarding my colonoscopy. Total Regence Paid was shown in bold at the top.

The amount: $0.00

Total Member Responsibility to Provider(s) was right next to it. The amount: $805.69

...Perplexed, I phoned Gastroenterology Specialists of Oregon and talked with their insurance company billing person. She told me that because a polyp was removed, Regence considered the entire colonoscopy a "medical procedure," not a preventive screening.

...the billing person told me that every private insurance company she deals with considers that removing a polyp stops a colonoscopy from being a covered preventive service, even though the patient (like me) has no symptoms of colon cancer and the polyp removal is purely preventive, not curative.

Later I got another bill from the physician who did the procedure. That added $938 to my colonoscopy tab, of which Regence again paid nothing (I have a $2,500 deductible).

I was all set to appeal, since preventive services are supposed to be fully covered by Regence's Evolve plans, and I could provide quite a bit of evidence showing that removal of a benign polyp is an integral aspect of a preventive colonoscopy.

When I phoned Regence customer service to get some information needed for an appeal, the person I talked to said "I need to talk with a supervisor" after I asked why Regence didn't pay for my colonoscopy even though the primary diagnosis code was for a screening procedure.

Coming back on the line, she told me that my provider had submitted an adjusted claim and that I'd likely be a lot happier after it was processed.

While we were on vacation the Portland Oregonian ran a story that casts light on Regence's change of heart about paying for colonoscopies where a polyp is found and removed. Browsing through saved papers upon our return, I was encouraged to come across "Colonoscopy coverage creates confusion."

Because near the end of the piece I read:

In addition to Kaiser Permanente and Health Net, Regence BlueCross BlueShield, which has 3 million enrollees in four Northwest states, initially said it charged members the deductible and coinsurance if a colonoscopy found and removed a polyp. But Regence spokeswoman Rachelle Cunningham subsequently said that was a mistake, there should be no cost-sharing charges, and the company was "re-evaluating and re-processing some claims."

She also said patients "might need to take an active role in appealing a claim they felt was processed incorrectly to receive the benefits they are entitled to under the law."

I'd been checking my Regence account online almost every day the past few weeks, figuring that the adjusted claim should be processed soon. This morning I saw that Regence was paying $644.55 for the facility part of the bill, and $750.40 for the physician part.

Leaving me with 20% co-insurance. I'm not going to quibble about that, since a flawed prep and removal of a benign polyp during my colonoscopy two years ago meant that I had a repeat procedure much sooner than if I'd had a normal "all clear" colonoscopy.

So kudos to Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon for deciding, albeit belatedly, that colonoscopies should be considered preventive even if a polyp is removed. This makes me feel better about the company my wife and I fork over $1024 to every month for our individual policies (we're in our early sixties and can't wait to get on Medicare).

Today a couple of Regence guys met with the Salem Statesman Journal editorial board. They did their best to justify their rate increase, but I wasn't wildly impressed with the 20 minutes of the video that I watched.

The presentation started off with an oft-repeated statement that the 22% translates into an average of $36 per month for each individual policy holder. Well, not for people like us, who already are paying over $1,000 a month (as a couple) and would fork over more than $200 a month additional to Regence if the rate increase is approved as is.

I realize that the causes of health care inflation are various and widespread. But the Regence executive correctly told the editorial board that the United States health system (actually, non-system) is broken. Costs can't be controlled until we fix the system.

Yet Regence, along with the rest of the insurance industry, tried to stop Obama's health care reform efforts, a.k.a. the Affordable Care Act. You can't have it both ways, Regence. Don't complain that the system is broken at the same time you're trying to keep it that way.

For that huge bit of hypocrisy, I think you deserve to have your rate increase request slashed substantially by the state. Maybe then you'll be motivated to reform the system, rather than simply trying to suck more premium dollars out of your already-strapped policy holders.

May 24, 2011

It drives me nuts -- or rather, nuttier than I already am -- to hear congressional Republicans blathering on about how not raising the debt limit is key to cutting federal spending.

Here's a fact (ooh, scary! a fact!) for these Tea Party types: the federal debt limit has absolutely nothing to do with new future spending by the government.

If you read the information below you will discover that the debt ceiling that the Republicans are using to blackmail President Obama really has nothing at all to do with “increased spending.”

The debt ceiling is a formal acknowledgement of debt already incurred. Little things like Bush’s private war in Iraq and subsidies to oil companies making billions of dollars in profits.

Slowly, so all our Republican subscribers can understand, increasing the debt ceiling DOES NOT INCREASE SPENDING. If we don’t increase it to meet the amount of money we have already spent/borrowed we will be in default and the world as we know it will come to an end. Financial markets around the globe will collapse.

Congress already has passed, and the President has signed, all of the legislation that now requires the debt limit to be raised. It should be a no-brainer to do so. But brains often are in short supply on the "R" side of the aisle.

If the Republicans do not want to increase the deficit, they only need to stop passing legislation that is not paid for and therefore increase the debt. They do not need to tear the house down, as Senator Sanders put it, by failing to raise the debt ceiling. They just need to exercise restraint when it comes to handing out subsidies and tax cuts that are not paid for.

This basic fact needs to be emphasized more by the media, because I suspect that lots of people think raising the debt limit means a bigger federal deficit.

No, that's wrong. All it means is that the United States will be able to pay its bills and meet obligations already incurred by Congress. To do otherwise would be hugely irresponsible.

Late in 2010 the Republicans demanded that the Bush tax cuts be extended for several more years. Along with other deals this added $860 billion to the deficit. Now the time has come to raise the debt limit so what the Republicans voted for can be paid for.

Yet John Boehner and his fellow GOP'ers are acting as if the need to raise the debt ceiling has nothing to do with them. Actually, it does. So they should do the honest thing and raise the debt ceiling without delay.

Then the Republicans can argue with Congressional Democrats and Obama about future federal spending. Dragging the debt limit into that debate makes no sense, because the United States already is obligated to pay the bills that require an increase in the national debt.

Great news for Oregon cougars -- and those, like my wife and me, who want to have environmental policies based on solid facts rather than irrational fears.

House Bill 2337, legislation that would reinstate some sport hunting of cougars with dogs has died in the state Senate. Many thanks to the legislators my wife phoned yesterday, pleading to not let fanciful emotion sway their votes.

Cougars are an extremely minimal danger to humans. Much less so than dogs, bees, horses, snakes, and of course, other people. Their numbers likely aren't increasing nearly as much as proponents of cougar hunting proclaim.

And so what if they eat some deer?

Cougars, like coyotes and wolves, are a long-time part of nature's top predator ecosystem. Homo sapiens aren't. It makes more sense to let nature do its thing, than to try to control every last bit of it with anal-retentive pseudo-exactness.

Laurel, my wife, did a lot of testifying and letter-writing on this issue. She got frustrated when state legislators and Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife staff ignored scientific research about cougar behavior.

Hopefully the defeat of HB 2337 will stimulate these folks to spend the next few years educating themselves about cougars. Facts are a wonderful thing, much more appealing than baseless fears.

May 22, 2011

On the first day of our Maui vacation my wife asked me if I was going snorkeling. This is her favorite ocean activity. I hate it.

"No," I said. "Snorkeling is a been there, done that thing for me. Water gets in my mask because I have a beard. The fish all look the same after a while. I'd rather sit on the beach and observe the varieties of humans. That's more interesting to me."

So when I wasn't boogie boarding or sidestroke swimming, I had my camera at the ready, prepared to snap some shots of the various sorts of Homo sapiens who inhabit the Napili Bay beach.

Here's the results of my enjoyable late April - early May research. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

The paddle boarder. Paddle boarding was big on Napili Bay this year. This is the most attractive specimen that I observed.

Quasi-fit older male. Sitting on the beach for as long as I did, watching barely clad humanity pass by, I quickly realized that lots of people are sadly out of shape. It was good to see older guys who looked fairly fit, even if they had some extra pounds on them.

Beach "surfers." I'm someone who likes to use my boogie board on large waves breaking quite a ways offshore. But these girls had a lot of fun with waves right on the beach. Each to his own; that's the hang loose Hawaii philosophy.

Gaggle of girls. Teenage girls seemed more likely to form into groups than the guys did. Here's a foursome.

Heavy-laden beachgoer. The top example happens to be my wife, Laurel. Beach bag, snorkel gear, mat, umbrella. Umbrella was a mistake; it was on the patio of our condo but was found to be broken after Laurel carted it halfway down the beach.

Paddleboarding with kid. This was common. The kids seemed to enjoy the carefree ride. Even (or especially) if Mom or Dad dumped them in the ocean.

Paddle board fishingpeople. She was the only example I saw of this rare breed. She carried her gear and pole in a box on her board while the guy she was with used a kayak.

Off-shore boogie boarder. This could have been me, except I'd just come in from riding the waves and (obviously) was sitting on the beach with my camera. The boogie boarding was pretty blah this trip; no large waves, just some middling ones breaking over a reef area.

Colorful sea life. Some people go in for bright inflatable fun. I liked how they added dashes of color to the surface of the ocean, just as tropical fish do underneath.

Maxi-Americanus. This variety of over-stuffed human was much in evidence. The guy's shirt reads "Eat Crab." Dude, I think you've done enough of that, along with the butter sauce.

Mini female, maxi male. A variation of the above, which was quite a bit more common than the reverse -- maxi female, mini male. Go figure (if you're Donald Trump or otherwise wildly wealthy, that's often the answer -- a big-figured bank account).

Older lady clumping. This group was having a good time until a large wave impelled by a rising tide washed over them. The lady in the middle got dragged into the ocean and had a difficult time getting up until several people came to her rescue.

Fully sun-screened child. I saw this girl several times. Sometimes she wore shorts instead of the pants outfit. Nicely protected from the sun, perhaps for a medical reason.

Gray-haired bobber. Common variety of beach life. Hey, it describes me. But savvy photographer that I am, I never turned the camera on myself.

Fit not-so-young-anymore woman. A photographic surprise. My eye for curves spotted her and I fired up my telephoto lens. Then she turned around and I said to myself, "Whoa, she's old! And fit. And still damn good looking."

Extra large beached male. Yes, this specimen did manage to rise from its resting place of the sand. But it was touch and go for a while.

Locals chilling out. On the weekend and late in the afternoon some of the permanent residents would visit the beach. They were easy to distinguish from the touristas.

Guy tribe. Young dudes on the beach usually don't clump together and chat like the dudettes do. They often engage in mysterious behavior, like taking a photo of the beach while his buddy says, "What the fuck, man?! It's just fucking sand!"

Athletic wave player. This local girl could do some rad (is that still a "hip" word?) tricks with her boogie board on beach-breaking waves. Fun to watch. Even more fun to do, I assume.

The metal detector guy. Guess every beach has one. He came out early in the morning. I thought this was ridiculous... until I got home and heard that many people lose expensive rings in the ocean, sometimes right after they've gotten married on Maui.

Just married's on Maui. Speaking of which... I saw several beach weddings. What a great idea. No rental fee. No (or few) guests. No decorations other than nature. Honeymoon starts right after the wedding. This looked like a double wedding to me. Or maybe a renewal of vows for the older couple.

Rock crawlers. Some humans enjoy creeping around tide pools, looking at something or other. Me, I preferred to sit on the beach with a telephoto lens, looking at the rock crawlers.

Ocean dog. Since Hawaii has a lengthy waiting period to bring in a dog, only the locals could bring theirs to the beach. My wife would get all homesick for our family canine when she saw a dog playing in the water. This one wasn't wild about the ocean, but did its best to follow its owner.

Gray haired rock percher. Actually, this guy was quite fit and did a bunch of swimming. Apparently he was just taking a breather on a reef rock. (You're not supposed to touch them, but tourists do lots of things they're not supposed to do.)

Paddleboard walker. OK, she wasn't actually taking her paddleboard for a leash walk. I'm not sure what she was doing. Whatever it was, she looked good doing it.

Stylish non-swimmer. Occasionally I'd spot beachgoers who weren't dressed for the water. This girl was just dressed to look good.Heavily tattooed macho man. There were quite a few of these on the beach. It seemed that if you were twenty to thirty-five, a tattoo of some sort was almost obligatory. This guy had an especially dramatic tattoo, though. When I saw it, I thought "Man, that's unusual." Then, like a minute later...

This guy walked by. That's what keeps me an avid observer of human beach life. You never know what variety will pop up next.

May 20, 2011

Today's story in the Portland "Oregonian" about a delay in the availability of public electric car charging stations created a further drain in my enthusiasm for buying a Nissan Leaf or Mitsubishi i, even though I've put down money for a reservation on both cars.

The story says:

With its backyard chicken farms, recycling ethos, and nation-leading love affair with the Toyota Prius, Oregon has long been seen as the perfect test bed for electric cars.

...But a funny thing may be happening on the way to the charging station. Oregon consumers, local experts say, haven't been beating the bushes to get their hands on a Nissan Leaf, the only mass-produced, all-electric vehicle currently on the market. Moreover, the vehicles have been slower to arrive than some anticipated.

And those public charging stations -- the plug-in infrastructure that will help wary consumers overcome the dreaded "range anxiety"?

Well, good luck finding one.

Last weekend my wife and I talked about the pros and cons of trading in our Prius for an electric car during a drive from Salem to central Oregon, a 2 1/2 hour trip across the Cascades that we couldn't have made in a Nissan Leaf -- or any other fully electric vehicle that's available now, or on the horizon.

We own a Toyota Prius. We were driving in our other hybrid, a 2006 Highlander SUV. We're dedicated environmentalists. In short, we're the sort of people who want to buy an electric car.

But we decided that the time isn't right for us.

"Range anxiety" is the biggest reason. We live six miles from the Salem city limits. So we'd have to burn up twelve miles of battery power getting to and from the town where we head for most of our errands/ shopping/ entertainment/ etc.

I've read quite a few reviews of the Nissan Leaf, which supposedly has an average range of about 100 miles when fully charged. A dismayingly large percentage of the first Leaf drivers talked about either running out of power in an unexpected fashion, or needing to engage in pretty extreme driving behaviors to make the electric car functional.

Like, not turning on the heater in frigid weather. Or driving glacially slow to maximize mileage. We found it hard to justify spending almost $30,000 on a car that can't be driven like a normal vehicle.

(I had a '57 VW bug in college, so I already know what it's like to drive around in winter without a working heater, or to be one of the slowest cars on the road.)

After perusing those reviews, it became obvious that the current first generation of electric cars require a lot of attention from their owners. You can't cruise around carefree, going here and there quasi-spontaneously, especially given the lack of public charging stations.

And even if youre running low on juice and a station is nearby, the thought of sitting around for half an hour or so to get a "fill-up" wasn't appealing to us.

My wife and I are both notoriously prone to leaving late when we need to be somewhere on time. "I had to charge the car" would give us a new excuse for being 30 minutes behind schedule, but we're already pretty good at explaining our lateness.

Plus, that Nissan Leaf 100 mile range carries a lot of "it depends..." with it. Driving style, temperature, hills, use of heating/ air conditioning/ accessories, traffic jams, number of people in the car -- all of this affects electric car range a lot more than regular car mileage.

My wife and I are willing to put up with some inconveniences and complications to go Greener. However, the current status of electric car technology leaves us thinking "Someday, but not today."

This is how we felt about the first generation iPhone and iPad. Now we're happy users of later generation devices. We appreciate the early adopters of the iPhone and iPad, because they made it possible for Apple to be profitable and make improvements in its products. Likewise, we applaud the first electric car buyers.

I can see us buying a second generation electric car. If the range could get up into 200 mile territory, that'd be great. Alternatively, we'd like a hybrid with a 100 mile all-electric capability, after which a small gas engine would kick in.

Electric cars are the wave of the future. Eventually we'll surf on that wave. For now, though, we'll watch from the beach and cheer on the early adopters.

May 18, 2011

Over on my Strange Up Salem blog I've put up a post which conclusively answers the question that plagues residents of our city: why is Salem afflicted with so much blah'ness?

We're cursed. That's got to be it.

Check out "Is Salem, Oregon cursed by a 'blah spell?" The answer is yes; the solution is described. Excerpt:

Thus the curse of Oregon's capital isn't to be infected with evil. Hey, that'd be interesting, cool, something to be proud of. (Las Vegas does just fine with that sort of curse.)

No, Salem's curse is existential.

It's to be doomed with a void at the barely beating heart of our slow-moving metropolis. It's a lack of creative energy, a deficit of imagination, an emptiness that blocks attempts to cure the lethargy that infects Big Ideas and turns them into a shadow of themselves.

May 16, 2011

Measure 37 may be dead after 62% of Oregonians voted for Measure 49 in 2007, but this attempt to undo our state's highly successful land use laws lives on in the courts -- where a few would-be subdivision developers press on with their efforts to pave over Oregon's farm and forest land.

Today the Bend Bulletin related an all-too-familiar (to land use junkies like me) tale of a clueless Board of Commissioners and Circuit Court judge in a rural county who tried to twist vested rights law to benefit a well-to-do landowner, but were slapped down by the Oregon Court of Appeals.

(Irritatingly, the Bend newspaper doesn't have free online access. I forked out 50 cents for a copy of "Cost appeal delays 59-lot housing project." So I hope you'll appreciate this article if you read it in a continuation to this post.)

Having followed quite a few vested rights cases after the passage of Measure 49, I couldn't resist delving into the particulars of this case.

It didn't take long for me to grasp the broad outlines of this Crook County legal drama, which, as noted above, is depressingly similar to what's happened in Yamhill, Marion, Polk and other Oregon counties where the powers-that-be have a habit of ignoring the law if a big developer wants to go ahead with a Measure 37 project.

In this case, Shelley Hudspeth sought to complete development of a 59-lot residential subdivision. As described in the Court of Appeals ruling that overturned Crook County's green light "go ahead":

For purposes of appeal, the following facts are undisputed. Measure 37 waivers from the county and the state allowed for the development of a 59-lot subdivision on Hudspeth's property. Hudspeth obtained tentative approval from the county for a subdivision and expended hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop the property before Measure 49 became effective on December 6, 2007.

Thereafter, Hudspeth applied for a determination from the county that she had a vested right to complete and continue the use described in the Measure 37 waivers. Hudspeth's application indicated that the total project budget was $5,081,946. That figure, however, did not include the cost of residences that would ultimately be constructed in the subdivision.

Kind of a big oversight, to put it mildly. A residential subdivision without residences isn't much of a subdivison.

Measure 37 waivers don't allow a property owner to sell buildable lots. That's part of Land Use Law 101, which even non-attorneys like me who follow these sorts of cases know full well.

So it should have been obvious to the county planning director who went along with Hudspeth's omission of the expense of building 59 homes in her total cost of development that this was legally wrong, as it also should have been to the County Commissioners who later rubber stamped the vested right approval.

Reading through the minutes of the County Court (that's what some rural counties call their Board of Commissioners) hearing where the Hudspeth application was approved, I saw that some folks from 1000 Friends of Oregon and Central Oregon Landwatch tried to educate the commissioners about what the law required.

Their response: basically "Law, what law? We'll do whatever we want to do."

It's more than a little strange how common this attitude is among conservative county commissioners, who claim to be all big on law and order -- except when they want to ignore the law in order to allow a deep-pocketed developer to do whatever he or she wants.

A Crook County circuit court judge went along with the county's weird legal reasoning.

Even though the Oregon Supreme Court has said that it is the ratio of total project costs to actual expenditures which is an important factor in determining whether someone is vested, both the judge and the commissioners cast a blind eye on what the Hudspeth subdivison would cost to fully build -- including the expense of constructing 59 homes.

Consistently with those principles, we conclude, as we did in Friends of Yamhill County, Biggerstaff, and Kleikamp, that the circuit court "should have remanded for the county to determine the extent and general cost of the project to be vested and to give proper weight to the expenditure ratio factor in the totality of the circumstances." Friends of Yamhill County, 237 Or App at 178.

In this case, the county court determined that the denominator need not include the cost of the residences that were sought to be developed and the circuit court determined that it was unnecessary to determine the denominator in the expenditure ratio. Those are legal errors that require reversal.

Motion to dismiss denied; reversed and remanded.

The Bend Bulletin article quotes Hudspeth's attorney, Ed Finch, as predicting that the Crook County commissioners will end up approving the subdivision again, after which the state Department of Land Conservation and Development will appeal the approval again.

Likely, he's right.

But hopefully the commissioners will come to their senses and realize that they aren't above the law. I did some quick calculating and don't see any way that Hudspeth can show that she has spent the 7% or so of total project costs that is typically cited as a benchmark for passing the ratio test.

The Court of Appeals ruling says that both the county and circuit court judge said that Hudspeth had spent about $500,000 on the subdivision, even though the developer claims the total should be around $900,000.

Since Hudspeth and her attorney didn't challenge the $500,000 determination, it seems to me that this is a settled legal fact now. So what's left to determine is the additional cost of building 59 homes, adding that on to the $5,082,000 total project budget without homes.

Let's say that each home costs $200,000 to build, a really low-ball figure. That's $11,800,000. Added onto $5,082,000, the total project cost now is $16,082,000. With actual expenditures of $500,000, Hudspeth has spent only 3% of what it would have taken to complete her subdivison.

Almost certainly that's a "fail" on the ratio test, being a long distance from 7%.

So I bet that even if the Crook County commissioners find some way of rationalizing another vested rights approval after dealing with the remand, when the case gets sent back to the Court of Appeals the county will be slapped down again.

Eventually these Measure 37 cases will have run their course and Oregon farm/forest land can breathe a sigh of relief. (Poetically speaking, of course.)

That day can't come too soon for me, though I'll admit that my inner land use attorney gets some enjoyment from following the legal shenanigans in Crook County and other places.

I'd ditch this malevolent entity instantly if it weren't for the pre-existing condition trap on individual health insurance policies like we have, so we're stuck with Regence for three more years until we'll be joyfully eligible for Medicare.

Regence of Oregon's newest mind-boggling outrage upon its individual policy-holders is an insanely large22.1% rate increase request that'd take effect August 1, 2011 if it is approved.

This follows a string of annual rate increases over the past four years that ranged from 16% to 24%, way over the general inflation rate. Also, way over the health care inflation rate.

I learned this last disturbing fact thanks to Regence of Oregon's own Twitter feed, where an employee has the thankless job of trying to post upbeat tweets about her appallingly depressing company.

Well, what surprised me the most in this NPR article, given Regence's 22.1% rate increase request, is that health care costs "only" increased 7.3% last year. So why is Regence asking for almost three times that?

Apparent answer: greed.

Yesterday the New York Times reported that even though insurance companies are raking in record profits, they still are out to raise their prices substantially. (Their CEOs must be ex-oil company executives.)

Yet the companies continue to press for higher premiums, even though their reserve coffers are flush with profits and shareholders have been rewarded with new dividends. Many defend proposed double-digit increases in the rates they charge, citing a need for protection against any sudden uptick in demand once people have more money to spend on their health, as well as the rising price of care.

Oh my. Yes, it'd be terrible if people had enough money to use their health insurance to get necessary medical care.

This is what my wife and I have learned from dealing with Regence of Oregon over the years: this health insurance company is dedicated to providing its policy-holders with as little health care as possible.

Why? Because every premium dollar spent reduces the amount Regence can spend on administrative costs and squirrel away as reserves (a.k.a. "profits"). Take a look at the Oregon Insurance Division's posting of the 22.1% rate increase request.

Regence of Oregon's administrative costs are 20%.

So right off the bat every premium dollar policy-holders like us send to Regence turns into 80 cents that's available for providing health care. And from painful experience my wife and I know that Regence of Oregon is an inefficient bureaucracy, so much of the company's administrative overhead is wasted.

Public comments on the outrageous rate increase can be made here. I was one of the first (# 7) to do so, saying:

Every year we get double digit rate increases from Regence, along with lousier customer service. This includes last year, when rates stayed about the same only because benefits decreased by the equivalent of double digits. [Also, because we raised our deductible subtantially.] Regence stopped paying for my wife's Restasis (dry eye) medication on July 1, 2010 after forcing individual policy holders to switch to their crappier "Evolve" plans, which really were a devolution.

She was able to win an appeal only after going through horrendous bureaucratic roadblocks with Regence, which is terribly managed. No one knows what anyone else is doing. Inefficiencies abound at Regence, as is obvious to anyone who phones them with even a simple request.

On my side, I saw that another commenter on the rate increase noted how Regence doesn't really have an emphasis on prevention, because it won't pay for services that actually prevent a problem. Such as my colonoscopy, which involved removing a benign polyp -- a central benefit of a screening colonoscopy. So far Regence considers this a "medical procedure" if a polyp is quickly snipped out, leaving me with a bill for the entire colonoscopy.

Ridiculous. I'm tired of paying tons of money to a health insurance company which clearly is dedicated to providing as little health care to its policy holders as possible. Then they have the gall to demand a 22% rate increase after spending the past year trying to deliver as few services as they can within the bounds of legality and ethics -- bounds which Regence tries to stretch at every opportunity.

May 12, 2011

For me, Argentine Tango offers up a glimpse of what it must be like to have mild Alzheimer's.

I've had a bunch of classes in this challenging dance style, starting over five years ago (see "We tango, and also get tangled"). Yet when my wife and I are in an off phase of our off-and-on relationship with Argentine Tango, almost instantly I forget just about everything I knew about how to dance it.

The main reason is that Argentine Tango is the most spontaneous and unpatterned of partner dances. I'm at least mildly competent in quite a few ballroom styles -- waltz, foxtrot, swing, American tango, salsa, cha-cha-cha, hustle.

But Argentine Tango is a whole other dance animal.

So far I haven't been able to tame it. I'm pretty sure this is because of the nature of the beast. Other styles have a basic rhythm and step pattern that offers a "leash," so to speak, that both the leader and follower can hold on to.

The essence of Tango is simply walking. As Carlos, another instructor, told us: "Guys, Tango is simple. It's just walking with the woman in a way that will make her fall in love with you." (For the duration of the dance, at least.)

What I discovered last night -- again -- at the first session of Tango4Salem's Beginner Tango Intensive at the Middle Earth Dance Studio is that "simply walking" with a partner isn't simple at all.

However, Frank and Karen Davis, the instructors, did a great job of introducing (or reintroducing) me and my classmates to Argentine Tango.

Like I said, every time I meet up with this dance style again, it feels like the very first time. Basic lead and follow practice was both fun and challenging. I'd done the drills before, yet right from the start I realized why I needed to do them again... and again... and again.

The fresh insight that I got from Carlos and Jodi is that however I dance with a partner is a reflection of how I dance with myself. Whatever problems I have dancing Tango are intimately related to the difficulties I have partnering with me.

Frank pointed out several problems with my Tango'ing that elicited a hearty right on in my mind. I wasn't projecting enough leader-energy through my chest, which makes it tough for the follower (usually, a woman) to sense my intention.

I wanted to blame this fault of mine on Tai Chi, because in this movement art one's energetic center is nearer the waist/abdomen, whereas in partner dancing the upper body needs to do the leading or male and female knees are going to collide.

But the truth is that I'm often overly tentative, both on the dance floor and in everyday life. I secondguess myself; I overanalyze; I ponder options rather than intuitively choosing a course.

On a recent Hawaiian Airlines flight to Maui I watched "The Tourist." I liked the movie, though it got mostly mediocre reviews. A favorite scene featured Johnny Depp, the (seemingly) mild-mannered tourist, meeting super-hot Angelina Jolie on a train to Venice.

She tells him he should arrange for them to have dinner together. Depp says, "Will you have dinner with me?" Jolie replies, "That's a question. Women don't like questions. Try again."

"I want you to have dinner with me." But there's a question mark at the end of his words, the way he says them. "Not good enough," Jolie tells him. "You and I are having dinner in the dining car," Depp finally says confidently. "I'd love to," she says.

(This isn't exact, just the way I remember the scene.)

I thought of the movie last night, as Frank was encouraging me to be more energetic and bold with my leading. There's a place and time for asking questions of a woman, but that isn't on the Argentine Tango dance floor -- where the man proposes what to do, and the woman follows.

Here's the thing, though: after the man leads and the woman follows, the man becomes the follower.

Meaning, he needs to let her finish her moves, whatever they are. So there's a constant interplay of yin and yang for both the leader and follower; each has to be attuned to the other, sensitive to what his/her partner is doing.

Just as in life.

For me this is the biggest fascination of Argentine Tango, what keeps bringing me back to this dance even though I'm perpetually perplexed by it.

Tango is a marvelous reflection of ourselves. How we move on the Argentine Tango dance floor will tell us a lot about how we move through life, including how we relate to other people.

[Update: I found the actual dialogue from "The Tourist." I didn't do too bad in my recollecting. Forgot the too demanding line, which also is a no-no when leading in dance.]

May 10, 2011

OK, we don't actually have a Nissan Leaf or Mitsubishi i yet. But I've finally been able to reserve a place in line to buy one of these cool electric cars, something that wasn't possible until recently.

While we were on a Maui vacation last month I read in the Honolulu paper about how Hawaii was going to be one of the first states where the Mitsubishi i MiEV would be introduced.

(This car is just called the "i," a strike against it. Anything that costs almost $30,000 should have more than one letter in its name. Plus, "i" doesn't sound green. And doesn't Apple control every use of a lower case "i" when it comes to selling a high tech product?)

Wondering what the other early introduction states would be, I leaped online and learned that California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii (a.k.a. the environmentally with-it states) would see the Mitsubishi i in early 2012.

Further, that it was possible to reserve one of the cars via a refundable $299 deposit. I did just that from our Maui condo's patio, having learned my lesson when I looked into the availability of the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf a few months ago.

The web sites of both car manufacturers basically told me tough luck.

They'd taken orders for all the Volts and Leafs they could sell for a while and said that later in 2011 prospective buyers would be graced with the opportunity to ask permission to fork out money for a car.

I found this irritating.

I sent emails to both Chevrolet and Nissan asking how serious they were about entering the electric (or quasi-electric, in the case of the Volt) car market, since they didn't seem like they wanted to make it easy for Prius owners like my wife and me to move up to a higher level of greenness.

So when I saw that Mitsubishi was inviting people to reserve a car now, I figured it made sense to make a $299 PayPal payment just in case the i (really Mitsubishi, you need a better name) turned out to be a winner.

I'm not convinced that an electric car is right for us.

But since we're a three car family now, after a Mini Cooper S entered my life and we kept our Toyota hybrids (Prius and Highlander), I figured that if we traded the Prius for an i or Leaf, short trips could be made on electricity and longer ones with our two gas guzzlers -- even if my wife and I needed to each separately drive over the 80-100 mile electric car range.

That's an optimistic range, by the way, from what I've been reading in various reviews. It assumes driving at a fairly low speed on level ground without much use of the heater or air conditioner.

But we live almost six miles from the Salem city limits, with some pretty large hills between us and our in-town errands. So before we buy an electric car, I'll need to do some testing to see how much range we've got at our disposal once we get into Salem (regenerative braking on downhill parts of Liberty Road could help with recharging).

I like the looks of the Mitsubishi i, but it's a bit too cute for my taste. And at first web site glance my wife thought it looked too small for her needs. The 80 mile claimed range also wasn't as appealing as the Nissan Leaf's supposed 100 mile range.

Thus I was thrilled to see an email from Nissan pop up in my inbox this morning. It was an invitation to reserve and order a Leaf that was being offered to "limited registered customers in launch markets." (I'd registered after learning that I couldn't reserve a Leaf earlier this year.)

Within a few minutes another fully refundable $99 had been added to our VISA balance. It's interesting that even though the Nissan Leaf is more expensive than the Mitsubishi i, the reservation charge is one-third as much.

That's one nice thing about the Leaf. The longer range is another thing. All in all, the Leaf looks like a more appealing electric car than the i -- albeit quite a bit pricier. Next we'll get a quote from a local dealer and hopefully be able to test drive a Leaf.

I really like the idea of an electric car. Not having to worry about the price of gas, the availability of Middle Eastern oil, or how we're contributing to global warming even with our two hybrid vehicles is deeply appealing.

Along with the current Oregon/federal tax credit incentives (I believe these are $7,500 federal and $750 Oregon.) These bring the price of a Leaf or i down to the merely "wildly high" range. We'd almost certainly lease an electric car, of course, given how quickly the technology likely will advance during the next few years.

So, the electric adventure begins. Until we actually drive a Leaf or i we can't be sure that one will meet our rural south Salem driving needs. But there's a good chance that we'll be filling up on Portland General Electric "fuel" before too long.

May 08, 2011

My mother died in 1985. I don't think about her very much. She's in the back of my mind, but rarely appears front and center. This morning, though, I wanted to devote some of Mother's Day to memories of her.

That turned out to be difficult.

Almost instantly I got into some pretty weird reminiscing. My mother, Carolyn HInes, was a complex person. As am I, I guess -- or I would have kept my Mother's Day thoughts simple.

She divorced my father when I was four, as I wrote about in "One hour with my father." (That's the total time I spent with him, ever, after the divorce.) My mother raised me by herself, not easy in the fifties and sixties.

Especially given her drinking problem, which flared up into obvious alcoholism about the time I entered high school.

Since my clearest memories of my mother are from when I was older, the drunken, mean, angry moments that I can easily recollect got all mixed up with happier moments when I tried to ponder what my mother meant to me.

A pain in the ass. Like when, during my teenage years, she'd yell from her bedroom into mine when I was trying to go to sleep, muttering nasty alcoholic crap that I couldn't tune out even with a pillow over my head. It got so bad, when I'd drive home from a date with my high school girlfriend, who had a pleasingly normal family, I'd pass a liquor store and think "I should throw a rock through the glass and steal some stuff, just so people would know that seemingly well-adjusted star student Me actually is screwed-up beyond belief but I do a damn good job of hiding it."

A loving mother who was creative and intelligent. Like when I was in elementary school and she'd write a 20-minute play on her old typewriter, making enough carbon copies for three or four of my friends and me to learn our lines. We'd rehearse in our living room after school. Then the original play, which always was funny and well-written, would be put on by us in a classroom during the Three Rivers (California) school Halloween Carnival. Kids and their parents would buy some cheap tickets to see us act, sitting in those little desks that adults could barely cram themselves into.

Many more memories whipped through my brain this morning, of course. Confusion filled me. I realized that I didn't know who my mother was. Not really. I had no idea how Carolyn Hines experienced the world, how life looked from her perspective.

All I had were some selective memories of the thirty-six years we shared this Earth, about half of which were in the same house and half apart. I couldn't come up with a coherent Mother's Day thought, a greeting card sort of succinct statement that I could recite to myself and feel like I'd expressed my feelings toward her.

Good/bad. Happy/sad. Love/hate. Compassion/anger. My recollections of her kept bouncing back and forth in a Yin/Yang fashion, never settling down into a harmonious This is how things were with my mother.

After ten minutes of this I got tired of the craziness. I was beginning to veer off into even stranger psyche territory. I was getting obsessed with thoughts of missed opportunities, not only with my mother, but also with other people who meant a lot to me when I was growing up.

Enough. Stop it. Calm down.

I told myself to get a grip on myself, one of those self-referential inner commands which don't make any logical sense yet still seem effective in getting out of a polluted stretch in my stream of consciousness.

I decided to focus on one honest moment -- which my analytical acronym-loving mind recognized as an OHM. Nicely Hindu. Meditational. A mantra to calm my Mothers Day mental meanderings.

Several candidate memories presented themselves to me. I cast aside the negative ones. I wanted my One Honest Moment to be a happy one, a Mother's Day recollection that made me feel closer to my mother, not more distant.

She'd had another stroke. My wife and daughter had driven down with me from Oregon to visit her in a charming home-based care facility right there in little Three Rivers. My mother wasn't able to walk on her own. We talked with her for a while in her room, then asked her if she'd like us to take her outside. She did.

With the aid of a wheelchair, if my memory is correct, we got my mother into our car. Then I drove down to a bridge that crossed the main fork of the Kaweah River, leading onto Dinley Road, which followed the river downstream. I stopped at a turnout next to a small beach that I remembered from my childhood days of roaming the river.

My wife took a blanket down to the riverbank. I opened the passenger car door, leaned down and picked my mother up, cradling her in my arms. She put her hands around my neck. My mother wasn't big on hugging. This was an unusually intimate physical moment for us. But it felt so right.

I picked my steps across the river rocks carefully. I didn't want to stumble and drop my mother. That wouldn't be part of her stroke rehab program. I managed the short walk to the river just fine. My mother wasn't very heavy. We'd switched roles. I was carrying her like a child; she was trusting me to get her safely to the blanket.

It was a deeply moving experience for me. A great choice for my One Honest Moment.

What I've learned on this Mother's Day is that what matters most to me aren't grand overarching all-encompassing recollections of the way things were or how someone was. Instead, it is discrete moments which were so meaningful to me, a few seconds of a memorable memory have much more of an impact than days, weeks, months, and years of forgotten or barely recollected everyday experiences.

There are moments. And then there are moments.

I had lots of each with my mother, both good and bad, happy and sad. Today, I chose to focus on one. One Honest Moment when my mother and I were genuine, real, connected, intimate.

So what if those moments were few and far between with us? One Honest Moment is worth a gazillion (maybe more!) of un-OHMs.

May 06, 2011

I'm sorry to do this, because several relatives on my wife's side of the family live in Indiana. But I have to. Today I'm adding Indiana to my unofficially official list of right-wing crazy states.

Governor Mitch Daniels and the state legislature have decided to pull all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, even though no federal money pays for abortions and Planned Parenthood's family planning services prevent many more abortions than the organization performs.

This illogic and general nastiness puts Indiana in the same league as states like Arizona, Texas, North Dakota and other parts of the country that make people in saner areas (like here in Oregon) wonder what the hell?

Along with making us Blue Staters glad that we don't live where the right of women to choose their health care providers is being attacked.

What is the real meaning of the Republican assault – through state budgets – on funding for abortions? It is really an assault on women’s rights to choose health care providers, with Republicans taking aim at starving Planned Parenthood clinics by denying Medicaid recipients the ability to go to them for services.

Abortion is legal. No government money pays for abortions in Indiana. Only 2-3% of visits to Planned Parenthood clinics are abortion-related. Polls show that a majority of Americans favor federal funding of Planned Parenthood.

As Congress considers restrictions on and total elimination of federal funding for reproductive health serivces, two new public opinion polls released today indicate that the ultra-right lawmakers pushing for funding bans are far out of step with the majority of American voters.

In both polls, a majority of registered voters support federal funding of Planned Parenthood, and clearly oppose efforts to ban funding of the preventive health care services--such as lifesaving cancer screenings, breast exams, birth control, and testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections--provided by Planned Parenthood clinics.

Science blogger PZ Myers says it like it is: Republicans kill women. Pap tests and other preventive procedures provided by Planned Parenthood save lives. Thomas Levenson calculates that "three or four more women every year will die in Indiana unnecessarily – all for lack of access to the Planned Parenthood services that could have saved them."

NY Times columnist Gail Collins points out how hypocritical it is for Daniels and other Republicans to call for greater consumer choice in health care, then deny women the ability to choose where they want to obtain their preventive medical services.

In his capacity as deficit hawk, Daniels waxes eloquent on his conviction that if Americans have to pay more of their medical bills, they’ll make smart choices about whether that nagging headache really requires the expense of a CAT scan. Doubting that the individual patient can judge whether more tests or medical procedures are required, Daniels said, “demeans the dignity of people.”

However, women who are seeking an abortion have to be given not only the information they ask for, or the information the doctor thinks they need, but also faux facts that their local lawmakers want to force on them. And dignity be damned.

This is religious fundamentalism run amok. We're seeing efforts by the Christian American Taliban to undo women's rights that most Americans value greatly.

It's hard for me to believe that a majority of people in Indiana want to condemn three or four women a year to death by cervical cancer due to their state's defunding of Planned Parenthood clinics. Those women, though anonymous, will be just as dead as women stoned to death under Shariah law by the Islamic Taliban.

Next election, we'll see what kind of a state Indiana really is. Hopefully one day I'll be able to take it off my Crazy List.

May 04, 2011

Boogie boarding on the left side of Maui's Napili Bay, while waiting for waves I watched a bunch of large sea turtles feeding in the shallows of a reef that I also was interested in -- to avoid running into, as the turtles have hard shells and can handle waves that break over shallow rocks, while I can't.

When their heads popped up I imagined they were looking at me curiously. "What kind of fish is that, gray headed with a big flat blue fin that keeps it on top of the water?" But given how many other boogie boarders they must have seen, I doubt they considered me as anything special.

Back on the beach, I told my wife about the sea turtles.

She walked to the end of the bay to get as close to their feeding area as possible. I followed her, camera in hand. I stood as near to the reef rocks as the foam tossed up by breaking waves allowed, not wanting to have my beloved Sony camera doused.

It didn't take me long to learn that sea turtles are difficult to photograph from above the water. Their heads and shells are only visible briefly; by the time I was ready to take a photo of one it'd be back under the water again.

I was determined, though.

A voice inside my head kept saying, "It'd be great to be able to show other people what Laurel and I saw on our last day on Maui." So I kept snapping still shots, mostly of an ocean devoid of sea turtles. Eventually the fruitlessness of this hit home. I decided to switch my camera to movie-mode.

Not much better.

I still had a lot of trouble locating the turtles in the viewfinder. Getting a close-up shot was nearly impossible. But I would have kept on with my efforts to capture the moment if my camera hadn't suddenly presented me with a "X" across a battery symbol, after which the lens retracted and the camera shut off.

Instantly I felt relieved. The spell was broken. I realized that I'd been missing some great moments in order to capture them. Yet how could I bring home a moment as a photo or video if I'd never really experienced it?

What I'd have would be a recollection of what it was like for me to stare through a viewfinder while my mind was getting frustrated with how difficult it was to locate those shifty sea turtles. I'd have some photons recorded on a camera card, but I wouldn't have captured a genuinely meaningful moment.

Because the effort to capture it was preventing me from experiencing it. I'd been focused on how nice it'd be to show other people the sea turtles, losing sight of the fact that they were right freaking there in front of me and I wasn't really seeing them myself.

When my camera shut off an intuition popped into awareness. Laid out into words, it was something like this:

"No problem. I'm still equipped with an amazing multi-media recording device. It captures sights, sounds, smells, tactile sensations, emotions, thoughts -- everything that I'm experiencing right now. This amazing device is called My Brain. Start using it, you fool! It's a hell of a lot better at capturing meaningful moments than that Sony camera is."

For sure.

Watching the sea turtles in the waves mindfully in the moment was hugely different from observing them with a future-memory focus. I may not be able to show you the turtles, but what they were like is part of my experience store now.

This is a problem with social networking: Facebook, Twitter, blogs, instant messaging and all that lead us to think "How will I describe this moment later?" while we're in the midst of experiencing it. Splitting our attention isn't conducive to being truly attentive to what's going on.

In a February 2011 New Yorker article, "The Information," Adam Gopnik came up with a great one-liner:

Yet surely having something wrapped right around your mind is different from having your mind wrapped tightly around something.

The Internet and it's social networking tools have a tendency to wrap around our minds. But when we're intensely mindful, aware, and into a moment, that's when our minds are wrapped around experiences.

May 03, 2011

My wife and I have come to Maui almost every year for several decades. Being vegetarians (but not vegans), naturally the many seafood and steak restaurants don't interest us.

Good veggie food does, particularly if it is local and organic.

Since we always stay on Napili Bay, we're most familiar with vegetarian dining on the Lahaina side of Maui. Which, sadly, isn't as veggie-friendly as the funkier areas of the island such as Paia.

Here's some of our favorite places to eat vegetarian on Maui:

-- Whole Foods Market and Down to Earth Natural Foods, Kahalui. These are our first stops after we pick up our rental car at the airport. Whole Foods is new to Maui; Down to Earth is the long-time local natural food store. Each has a good selection of vegetarian take-out. Down to Earth is completely veggie with a more pleasing vibe. We buy a bunch of groceries at each before heading to our Napili condo

-- Mala Ocean Tavern, Lahaina. This usually is our first dinner eat-out spot. It's right on the ocean (but make a reservation if you want an outside table; Mala is busy around dinner time). We share a Farmer's Salad and the Hummus Quartet plate. The pita bread is excellent, along with the service. There aren't many other veggie options, but these two are worth a vegetarian's visit.

-- Lahaina Coolers, Lahaina. This restaurant and bar is just a few blocks from Front Street. It's open late, so we like to peruse the shops and art galleries early in the evening, then head to Lahaina Coolers for a meal. I love the Local Harvest Stirfry: green soba noodles, veggies, and fried tofu. My wife wasn't as wild about her Red Pepper Risotto; she liked the grilled veggie skewer and wanted more of it, with less risotto.

-- Hula Grill, Kaanapali Beach. One night during our stay we head to the Whaler's Village shopping center. After wandering around for a while the Hula Grill is our favorite dining choice. It's best to walk into the dining room, rather than the Barefoot Bar side of the restaurant. You can still eat outside by the beach, but you get a choice of three menus. We like to order a couple of veggie side dishes from the dining room menu, along with the $10 Tofu and Vegetable Stack. Healthy and relatively inexpensive dining in a great beachfront atmosphere.

-- Aina Gourmet Market, Lahaina. We've only been here once, as it recently opened. It's sort of hard to find, especially in the dark. The Market is mostly take-out, but the pleasant server/barista girl heated up some dishes for us in the microwave. We ate them at a small coffee bar, then took an oceanside stroll along the Honua Kai Resort grounds. The food is organic, local, and pretty spendy. Still cheaper, though, than eating at a regular restaurant.

-- Flatbread Company, Paia. There's quite a few good vegetarian eating options in funky Paia, on the other side of Maui from Lahaina. If you're in the mood for pizza, you can't go wrong at the Flatbread Company. I can't recall ever eating a better veggie pizza than the Vegan offering. We added some goat cheese and organic rosemary to it. My conclusion: every veggie pizza should have avocados and be cooked in a wood-fired oven.

-- Pita Paradise, Kihei. This is my favorite eating spot on the south side of Maui. If they had a Pita Paradise back in Salem, Oregon, I'd be ecstatic. What a great idea: to offer homemade tasting pita bread filled with all kinds of delectable options, some of which are vegetarian. This informal restaurant is next to a covered shopping bazaar, which adds to its "must eat here'ness" for us.

-- Thai Chef, Lahaina. Sometimes we stop by Thai Chef and get some takeout food for eating in our condo after putting in a calorie-depleting several hours of shopping on Front Street. I wouldn't say that this is the best Thai food I've ever tasted, but it's pretty darn good -- though I agree with some Trip Advisor reviews that the portions could be larger. Still, it's another good option for vegetarians, albeit with a shopping center atmosphere (which is why we usually get take-out and return to Napili Bay).